


As Salt-Rose or Topaz

by eatitnerds



Series: The Demon Had a Spell on Me [2]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Older Dipper Pines, Possessive Behavior, Possessive Bill Cipher, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-13
Updated: 2016-07-14
Packaged: 2018-05-31 20:42:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6486751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eatitnerds/pseuds/eatitnerds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dipper unknowingly agrees to a date with Bill Cipher.  Things always get worse before they get better, mostly because Dipper has no sense of self-preservation.</p><p>Part of a series, but can be read alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. It's Been a Long, Long Time Since I've Memorized Your Face

**Author's Note:**

> I've never posted a chaptered fic before! And posting chapters when I don't have everything written out?? It's kind of freaking me out. I think if I go about it like this, it'll be more likely to get done in a reasonable amount of time, though. 
> 
> Warnings for this chapter: underage (Dipdop is 16), gender dysphoria (equation of cis-ness with normality because Dipper is a sad self-hating baby).
> 
> I still don't have a beta, I've read over this for errors a couple of times, but please let me know if you spot anything glaring! Enjoy!

▲▲▲

_I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,_

_or the arrow of carnations that propagates fire._

△△△

On the morning of the Mystery Twins’ departure for their fifth summer in Gravity Falls, Oregon, Dipper woke with a start from one of the strange dreams he had been having for weeks now.  These weren't _quite_ nightmares… oftentimes, he took a sick, stomach-churning pleasure from them.  But they were dark and whirling, monstrous by any reasonable person’s standards.  Something about them smacked of Bill Cipher, although he had yet to actually _see_ the triangular demon in any of them.  And he couldn't exactly interrogate Bill about them until he was back in Gravity Falls, now, could he?  After the event that th town dubbed  Weirdmaggedon and immediately agreed never to speak of again, Grunkle Ford had bound the demon physically within the confines of Gravity Falls.  Ford could not, however, limit a _dream_ demon’s reach upon the plane of dreams. So Dipper speculated aimlessly, with no way to know the truth until he could personally shake the answer out of Bill.

The previous night's dream had already begun to fade by the time Dipper opened his eyes.  Still, he held on to scraps of it, visions of blood and teeth, sensations of cool fingertips running across his skin, claws scraping at his shoulders.  These things didn't scare him, only left his stomach roiling and a guilty heat pooling in his groin.  There was enough wrong with him already, wasn't there?  Why couldn’t he want normal things, the things other guys his age wanted?  He had wanted Wendy once, or he'd thought so, but it could easily have been a reflection of some desire floating just below the surface of his conscious mind to be a normal person, a cis person, happy with being a girl.  All of his crushes since had been fleeting, confusing, on people who'd barely been aware of his existence at best and who'd found him disdainful and disgusting at worst.

The objects of his dreams couldn't have any feelings for him, or for anything.  They weren't real.  They may have left confused and disturbed, but at least they were safe, right?  Right.

He lay in bed like this, alternately rationalizing his dreams and desires and scolding himself for them, until Mabel's alarm tone sounded.  (The alarm happened to be a recording of a choir singing in meows that Mabel had recently become obsessed with.)  Ever a morning person (as well as a night and every other time of day person) she popped out of bed like a bullet from a gun and descended immediately on Dipper in his bed.

"Bro-bro, get up!  Getupgetupgetupgetup!"

"No, Mabel, don't-"

She flung herself across his bed, and him.  Dipper groaned and gave her a half-hearted push.  She twisted to smile at him.  "Are you up, Dippindot?"

"I've been up, Mabel.  For, like, hours."

"What, really?  Was I singing in my sleep again?"

"No, I just - I had a bad dream."

"Oh.  You wanna talk about it?"

"Not really."  He sighed.  "I think I'd rather just forget about it."

Mabel laughed.  "I can help with that!"  She started clambering off of him, tugging him up after her by the arm.  "Come on, let's double-check your bags.  Maybe you won't forget anything this year!"

△△△

It wasn't to be - he forgot his toothbrush, and didn't realize it until late that night.  Although they’d had lunch with the Stans when they arrived, Mabel was soon dragged off by a squealing Candy and Grenda to Northwest Mansion, where Pacifica, they assured her, was suffering through a garden party (a party which she was prepared to ditch at a moment's notice).  Robbie and company showed up soon after Mabel left, piled into Robbie's beat up car and hooting until Dipper emerged from the Mystery Shack (having heard Stan's shouted complaints rather than the actual voices of his friends).

Wendy's absence was a disappointment, no doubt, and it showed on his face if Robbie's sharp laughter after breaking the news was anything to go by.  Still, it was probably for the best.  It would be his first summer there without her to give him those same old conflicted feelings..  And although he wasn't as close to Robbie or the others, he had fun with them, and he came home late that night tired but happy.

Mabel must have been staying the night at Northwest Mansion, for she was nowhere to be found.  Soos was long gone, and both Stans were asleep - Stan in the living room chair and Ford in Stan's bed.  Dipper meant to follow their lead, brush his teeth and crawl into bed, but when he went upstairs to do so, he realized what he'd forgotten this morning, swearing.

He rummaged through the bathroom cabinets with little expectation of finding a clean toothbrush.  Stan wasn't the type to buy necessities such as these in the first place, really, let alone _extras_.

Maybe skipping brushing for one night wouldn't have affected his habit.  Maybe.  But his other habits - washing his face, using his acne cream - tended to dissolve when he skipped them even once.  He didn't want to have to go through the trouble of retraining his brain into this particular habit, so he slid on his sneakers and slipped out the door.

The early summer air in Gravity Falls smelled sweet and familiar to Dipper as he walked down the road.  The moon was bright that night, and he didn't bother to turn on his flashlight.  Whatever danger might threaten him here would need no light to do so.  Still, he hardly even considered the possibility of harm coming to him.  The night seemed too tranquil for such things - except for one moment, when he heard a piercing, shudder-inducing animal howl in the distance, unlike anything he had heard before - but it cut off as quick as it had begun and he was left again in the quiet.

He'd made it about a mile down the road, halfway to the 24-hour gas station, when one of those dangers began speaking in his ear.

"Where ya headed this late at night, Pine Tree?" asked the familiar voice.  Dipper looked right, then left, finding Bill Cipher floating there at eye level and glowing in the moonlight.

"The gas station," said Dipper, voice slow and suspicious.  "What do you want, Bill?"

Bill laughed his unearthly, ringing laugh.  "Why do you always assumed that I want something from you, Pine Tree?  Maybe I only want to talk!"

Dipper raised an eyebrow.  "Do you only want to talk?"

"Weeeell," Bill began, only to be cut off by Dipper.

"Thanks for proving my point, Bill.  You can go away, now."  He picked up his pace, which predictably did nothing whatsoever to deter the demon.

"Oh, come on, Pine Tree, let me help you out."

Before he even opened his mouth to reply, Dipper felt something pop into existence in his hand.  He looked from the toothbrush to Bill, eyes narrowing.  "Did you just steal this from the gas station?"

Bill huffed and crossed his little arms, flashing briefly red in irritation.  "Rearranging matter is much easier than stealing a toothbrush."

Dipper huffed.  "What do you want for it?  I'm not gonna sell my soul for a fucking toothbrush."

"I don't want your soul," said Bill.  "At least - not today!  I want you to meet me tomorrow at midday in the clearing that's half a mile north of the Mystery Shack.  You know it?"

"Yeah... what would I have to do there?"

"Nothing.  All you have to do is meet me there."

"And you're going to, what?  Try to possess me again?  Kidnap me?"

"Nothing that bad."

"But something bad."

For the first time in Dipper's memory, Bill seemed actually to _think_ about his answer, the words coming out of him slowly and carefully.  "I... hope... that you won't think it's bad.  You can leave if you do, Pine Tree."

Dipper closed his eyes and sighed.  "Alright, Bill, I'll," he opened his eyes and shuddered upon finding himself back in the bathroom at the Shack, toothbrush still clutched in his fist.  "See you tomorrow," he finished, reaching for the toothpaste.

△△△

The next day - a Sunday - dawned bright and warm on Gravity Falls.  Dipper, for one, refused to let it dawn at all on him.  When the sunlight streamed through the window to shine on his face, he groaned, pulled his blanket over his eyes, and went back to sleep.  By the time he finally slithered out of bed he found that it was a quarter till 12, precariously close to midday.  He hurried into his clothes, tugging at the hem of his binder as he scrambled out the back door, shouting a hasty excuse to Ford at the kitchen table.  (The Grunkle in question had long since grown used to this sort of thing and didn't even look up from his book.)

He ran through the woods, narrowly avoiding tripping on a root at least twice, and he stumbled into the clearing just as the clock on his phone turned to 12:01.  Without it in his hand he had no way of knowing that, so he only clutched his stomach and stood wordlessly at the edge of the clearing panting, boggling at the sight spread out before him.  On a red checkered blanket in the middle of the bright open space a picnic had been set out - sandwiches and grapes, slices of apple and orange cubes of cheese, a teapot beside a sugar bowl and a tiny pitcher of cream, and a cake with golden frosting.  In the middle of it all sat Bill, his legs folded beneath him and a steaming cup of tea clutched in his miniscule hands.  He set down the cup and jumped into the air upon Dipper's arrival.  Did he - could Bill _be_ nervous? "Hey, Pine Tree, you made it!"

"Y...yeah," said Dipper, "I'm not late, am I?"  It wouldn't do for him to break their agreement, not with the way that Bill treated such breaches.  But Bill, unperturbed, shook his whole body in the negative..

"Midday is a wide time range, Pine Tree.  You didn't have to come at noon exactly."

Dipper eyed the food laid out on the forest floor.  "But you wanted me to," he said.

"Well," said Bill.  "Well."

"Bill, what is is this?"

"It's a picnic," said Bill with visible relief.  The entire situation was becoming more and more suspicious by the second.  "It's a human thing!  I checked."

"Yeah, I know it’s a human thing," said Dipper, "usually.  But it's not human if you made it.  What are you trying to pull?  Is this some kind of faerie curse thing, where I eat the food and you steal me away for a hundred years?  Are you trying to poison me?"

Bill blinked his eye, staring at Dipper for a long moment before looking away, body flashing melancholy blue for a fraction of a second, and sinking slowly to the ground.  "Like I said, Pine Tree," he said as he picked up his teacup and stared into it, "you can leave if you want to."

Dipper took a moment to run through every piece of lore and myth and legend he knew, wracking his brain for anything like this - a demon inviting someone to a fucking _picnic_ \- and when the thought jumped unbidden to his mind, he couldn't help but give voice to it.  "Bill.  Is this a _date?_ ”

Bill's _entire body_ turned pink, and _stayed that way._ Dipper gaped.  "Holy shit," he said. "Holy shit."

"Look, Pine Tree, will you stay or not? Well?" Bill demanded, flashing red.

"I-" Would he stay?  Did he want to stay, to have a date with Bill Cipher, of all people, who had tried to kill him on 3 separate occasions and tried to maim him on at least 7?  There would be some measure of forgiveness implied in doing so, wouldn’t there?  It was true that Bill had been less antagonistic towards him and Mabel during the summer before, having perhaps finally accepted the fact that he was stuck in Gravity Falls for the indefinite future, and there were the dreams, of course.  He badly wanted an explanation for them, and - his stomach rumbled loudly.  He had yet to eat today, anyway, so... "I guess I'll stay," he said, walking past the treeline and plopping down beside Bill.  The demon immediately set about making Dipper his own cup of tea, albeit in a cup much larger than his own tiny one.  "I thought you hated me," he blurted out when Bill offered him the cup.

For his part, Bill didn't waver.  "Of course, I don't hate you, Pine Tree!  You're too much fun!  Besides," he sipped at his tea with a mouth that wasn't there, "if I hated you, you'd be long dead."

"You hate Grunkle Ford and you haven't killed *him.*"  Dipper curled his fingers around the cup and brought it up to his face.  It smelled as though Bill had packed a meadow full of flowers into it.

"Sixer?  What makes you think I hate Sixer?"

"Well, you turned him into solid gold to keep him as a trophy, and then he bound you to Gravity Falls forever.”

"I don't think I'll be here forever, Pine Tree.  Sixer doesn't know that kind of magic.  But no," he continued, and Dipper could hear the grin in his voice even though he had no mouth with which to grin, "I don't hate Sixer either.  He's fun, too... but don’t worry, you're even more fun than he is."

What a strange thing it was to be leered at by a pyramid.

"So, uh, so what kind of sandwiches are these?"

"You haven't tried your tea yet," replied Bill.  "Why don't you try it first?  Then I'll tell you."

A beat of silence.  "You swear there isn't anything magical in this?"

"Pine Tree, I told you I wouldn't poison you-"

"It's not poison that I'm worried about-"

"Then _what_ -"

"I don't know, if you can make poison, maybe you can make some kind of - of magical love potion-"

"Love potion?" Bill cackled.  "Pine Tree, what do I need a love potion for?  You're already obsessed with me!"

Being laughed at was so much worse, so much more embarrassing and shameful, than being leered at - a blush swept over Dipper's face, and he flung down his cup, too upset even to notice when it splashed burning hot on his skin.  "You're wrong about that," he lied, vaulting up and stomping out of the clearing, ignoring the cries of "Wait - Pine Tree, wait - Dipper!"

△△△/p>

When Dipper returned to the Shack, just half an hour after his departure, Ford still sat at the kitchen table, now with a forgotten bowl of cereal that had gone soggy.  This time he did look up, hearing the back door slam open and Dipper sniffling.  "Dipper?  What's going on?  What's wrong?"

"I don't - it's not - I don't wanna talk about it.  I really, really don't wanna talk about it.”  He wiped the tears from his eyes.  "When Mabel gets back, will you tell her I'm upstairs?"

"Of course, Dipper, but-"

"Please," Dipper begged, stifling the sob that threatened to leap up out of him. "Just leave me alone."  He shrugged off the hand that Ford had laid on his shoulder and hurried away.  Each stair up to the attic was a mountain to be climbed, and by the time he reached the top it was as though he’d been awake for a thousand years - he crawled into bed fully clothed and fell into a deep, fitful sleep.  By the time Mabel returned hours later, he had woken up, and lay in bed thumbing listlessly through a book on cryptozoology.  The door burst open and he started upright.

"Dipper!  Grunkle Ford says you came home crying‽"

"Yeah," Dipper sighed, sinking back down onto the bed.  "I did."

"What _happened?_ "

He told her.

"Oh, bro-bro," said Mabel with a sigh.  "You _are_ obsessed with Bill."

Dipper groaned and pulled a pillow over his head.  "I know, Mabel, of course I know.  But I don't want _Bill_ to know that."

"He's known for years by now-"

"I know, I know, but - but I'm not - I mean, I don't-"

"You don't...?"

"I don't want to date him!  He's tried to kill us on three different occasions!  I should hate him!"

Mabel tilted her head and asked him quiet and gentle, "Do you hate him?"  She pulled the pillow away from his face so she could see his expression - his cheeks were a ruddy pink streaked with tears.  "Do you?"

"I don't know," he said, and flung an arm over his eyes in place of the pillow.  "I just don't know."

"You know Bill is obsessed with you, too," said Mabel.  She squeezed his arm.  "And not in a hate-y kind of way."

“He's insane.  Maybe he thinks dating someone you hate is totally reasonable."

"I don't know, Dipper, I think being stuck in Gravity Falls with humans is giving him _feelings._  Good feelings.  Maybe even _love_ feelings."

"Nope," said Dipper.  "Nope, nope, no, we're not even considering that as a possibility, this conversation is over.  Talk to me about something else.  Talk to me about Pacifica, even."

Unseen by him, Mabel rolled her eyes and said, "Okay, Dipper, avoid your problems.  But remember, you asked for it.  So!  Pacifica and I-"

△△△


	2. When I Sleep on Your Couch I Feel Very Safe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dipper avoids his problems, and monsters (Bill included) lurk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I meant to post this while I was taking my finals, because I had it ready to go, but I was writing 50+ pages of papers and I forgot about everything else. SO. I've finished my finals (let's hope I passed all my classes) and here is the new chapter. Points to you if you know the podcast from which I stole the monsters.
> 
> Warnings for this chapter: Dipper is underage (16), canon-typical horror.
> 
> As per usual, unbeta'd but read over closely, please point out any glaring errors, and I hope you enjoy!

△△△

For a while — a week or two, or maybe three, for summer stretched out impossibly long in Gravity Falls, and to check a calendar consistently would only make your head ache with confusion — the Pines family managed to go without any sort of trouble, or even contact, from Bill Cipher.  Of course, it was not to last.  Bill began to pop up here and there, never for long and never to speak to Dipper.  To Mabel, to Ford, even to Stan once or twice, yes, but never to Dipper.

Despite the silence between them, Dipper knew that he didn’t go unnoticed by Bill.  Quite the opposite, in fact, seemed to be true.  When he left the Shack, he felt the distinctly that he was being watched.  He had felt Bill's eyes upon him before, and he recognized them now.  But the creeping feeling of dread that had once accompanied that gaze had been replaced by something else, something new, although Dipper couldn't put his finger on what that new sensation was, exactly.

Much to Mabel's irritation, he tried not to think about it, and he certainly wouldn't talk about it.  It wasn't hard to do.  There were more mysteries in Gravity Falls than could ever be solved in one human lifetime.  Dipper could have kept himself occupied without anyone's help.  As it was, his family and friends kept him going at a frenetic pace that left him falling into bed at night exhausted and immensely satisfied.  Now he slept like the dead, thick and dreamless and almost wholly uninterrupted.  Almost.

A few days into the summer he had been startled awake by the same bestial howl he had heard all those days — or had it been weeks? — ago, on the night of his encounter with Bill.  It stopped almost as soon as it had started, over and done by the time he had hoisted himself upright.  Mabel slept on soundly.  He kept himself awake for what felt like a long, long time (but was, in reality, no more than ten minutes) waiting to see if the noise would start up again, if he should try to rouse someone and go after the source.  He drifted off shortly, thinking he wouldn't have the sound again that night — and he didn't.

The second time, the sound lasted long enough for him to vault out of bed and scramble into his clothes, ending just when his hand touched the doorknob.  The third time he abandoned the idea of chasing after the sound in favor of shaking Mabel awake to learn what she made of it, whether she could even hear it.  She had slept through it each time, it was  _ loud _ , and she had never been a deep sleeper.  Perhaps all the “summer fun” she chased during the day had tired her out and deepened her sleep — yet when he'd pulled her far enough into consciousness that she understood what he was saying, she looked at him with a sleepily befuddled look on her face.

"Dipper," she said slowly, "I don't hear anything."

He tried to swallow the lump that had leapt suddenly into his throat.  "What?"

"I think — I can hear an owl."  Her face scrunched up as she listened hard for the sound of which he'd spoken.  "Yeah.  An owl.  But I don't hear anything else."

Dipper turned his face to the windows, trying to hide his expression of despair.  The sound was  _ so loud _ .  It almost hurt his ears just to listen to it.  And Mabel couldn't hear it?  She reached out a hand to settle on his shoulder, and he jerked with surprise.  "Bro... you still hear it?"

"Yeah, I," he closed his eyes, took a deep breath.  "Yeah."

"Maybe we should go wake up Ford..."

He shrugged her hand off as he had done with Ford's on the day of his disastrous date.  "No, no, I think — I think I'll just go drink some milk and wait for it to stop.  I'll tell Ford in the morning."  He smiled weakly at her.  "You go back to sleep, okay?"

She looked up at him, already drifting back towards sleep, but hesitant to leave him alone.  "You're not gonna try to go after it, are you?"

"No," he said with a shake of his head.  "Not tonight, anyway."

"Well, okay, Dippindot.  See you in the AM."  She fell asleep much faster than she woke up, leaving Dipper to stand by her bed for a long moment, listening to her breathing beneath the sound that came from far beyond the shuttered attic window.  At last he moved away, opening and closing the door as quietly as he could and padding down the stairs on bare feet.

In the kitchen, he poured himself a glass of milk.  He took it to the table, sat down, and didn’t touch it.  At some point between leaving the attic bedroom and sitting down the sound had stopped, but Dipper had been so absorbed in worry that he hadn't noticed when exactly.  And did it matter when the sound had stopped if it was, as it seemed to be, all in his head?  Was something  _ wrong  _ with him, aside from what he already knew of?  Could this be — and he shuddered at the thought, fingers curling tightly around his cup — some sort of trick on Bill's part, to punish him for the abysmal failure of their bizarre date?  

But no, no, it literally couldn't be Bill, for the Shack still had that unicorn magic from years before upon it.  As long as he was awake and within the walls of the Shack, Bill couldn't touch him, certainly couldn't trick his brain into hearing something that wasn't really there.  That he had first heard the sound outside the Shack, just before running into Bill, it didn’t have to mean anything.  It could’ve been a coincidence.  It had to be.

So what was it?  What could it be?  He wracked his brain for answers, scarcely aware of the way his head was drifting slowly down towards the table, falling asleep with his cheek pressed against the cool glass of milk.

△△△

In the morning, when the sun had only just begun to rise and the sunlight had yet to make its way through the blinds to shine on Dipper's eyelids, the sound of clanking and the rich, bitter scent of fresh coffee managed to rouse him.  It was, of course, Ford, who was both a night owl and an early riser fueled, in Dipper's opinion, half by copious amounts of coffee and half by some sort of magic.  Before Dipper had managed to keep his eyes open for more than a second or two, he felt the glass on his skin disappear and a big, calloused hand run through his hair.  By the time Ford returned to the table and Dipper heard the whump-whump of two mugs descending upon the table, he could actually keep his eyes open and smile at his Grunkle.

"G'morning, Grunkle Ford," he mumbled as he reached for his mug.

"Good morning, Dipper."  Ford sipped his coffee.  "Rough night?"

"Yeah," said Dipper, "something like that."

"Well, I'm here if you want to talk about it."  

"Thanks," Dipper said with a sigh.  He sat up and gulped half the mug's contents in one go, licking his lips.  "Grunkle Ford," he began slowly, carefully, trying not to let himself sound as crazy as he seemed to be, "have you ever heard this weird… screeching sound at night?"  He did his best imitation of the noise, which wasn't very good.  Still, Ford became more attentive, focus shifting from his coffee — which he set down on the table — to Dipper.

"I've heard something like that before," said Ford, "a long time ago."

"You have?"

"Yes.  It was thirty-five years ago, before I got sucked into the portal.  I never wrote it down in the journal, because I wasn't sure if it was real or not."  He looked away from Dipper's gaze.  "I thought it was Bill playing one of his tricks on me."

Dipper swallowed thickly.  "Do you still think that?"

"You've heard it as well?"  Dipper nodded.  "In the Shack?”  Another nod.  “Then no, I don't think it could be Bill.  The Shack is still protected — I checked just last month."  He paused.  "I'm surprised it didn't wake Stan and I up."

"I woke Mabel up last night," said Dipper, "and she couldn't hear it."

"Well."  Ford picked up his coffee.  "That's not a good sign."

"I don't know what it could be  _ but _ Bill.  What kind of monster makes a sound only one person can hear?"

Ford stared into his cup.  "I don't know either," he said at last, "but whatever it is, I don't want you to go after it until we have a better idea of what it could be, especially not without Stan or I.  Promise me you won't go after it, Dipper."

Dipper was too tired to protest this sort of treatment; usually Mabel  was the one who had to be reminded not to dive headlong into dangerous situations.  He had too much anxiety to do anything without a meticulously thought out plan (most of the time).  "I promise," he said.

"Good."  Ford rose from the table to pour himself another cup of coffee.  “I’ll make breakfast, and then we’ll get to work.”

△△△

When, one week and three instances of the sound later, Dipper broke his promise to his Grunkle, he couldn't actually bring himself to feel bad about it.  He had, he rationalized, thought it over long enough that going after its source was no longer a stupid, reckless course of action but rather a stupid, calculated one.  Armed with his own journal, his least favorite pen, and a flashlight, he knew he wasn't well protected, and yet it hardly seemed to matter in the moment that he slipped out the back door and into the night.  The near constant swell of anxiety in the back of his throat died down without any apparent reason  into something not so gnawing and persistent as usual.  The thought of Bill didn't even occur to him.  Only that strange animal noise pounding in his ears mattered.  An insatiable curiosity burned in his belly.  He had to  _ know. _

Outside of the Shack,  the sound changed, differed in a way that didn't make sense.  Within the confines of the Shack it had seemed a vast, sourceless thing, but now it was quieter, more precise, coming clearly from a certain direction, from the depth of the woods.  He switched on his flashlight and stepped past the treeline, into the forest.  He started off on one of the well-worn paths there, but he soon diverged from it, squirming his way through gaps in the brush, scraping his bare arms and knees on unseen branches and thorns.

He followed the sound for a long, long time, as he had done on countless other nights with countless other oddities within the woods of Gravity Falls.  The noise didn’t stop as it had every time he’d heard it before, and he could  _ feel  _ it growing ever closer, despite the fact that he couldn’t catch sight of its source.  What’s more, a smell as foul as the sound was strange hit his nostrils and stayed with him.  It was musky and rank, like something that had been dead for days in the summer heat and humidity.  It could have been something perfectly normal, a piece of carrion left rotting (which, a voice in the back of Dipper’s head told him quietly, did not tend to happen in a forest full of ravenous creatures).  It could have been that, but it wasn’t.  As he followed the sound, the smell followed him.  Still he was not afraid (and this, that voice said, even quieter now, was something to be afraid of in and of itself).

Just when he was about to give up and turn back — though he wasn’t sure he would be  _ able  _ to get back, he had ventured so deep into the forest, and the night was so dark — he caught sight of something moving at the edge of the beam of his flashlight.  It had only been a blur, the barest flash of a furred leg, but it was more than enough to keep him moving.  He saw this flash again, then two legs, moving in front of him, darting behind a tree and out of the scope of the light.  The rank smell of death persisted.  They were cervine legs, but not exactly, not quite rightly.  Only two of them ever passed his line of sight, not four, and they were long, bizarrely thin, stretched out like they were made of taffy.  There was something above those legs, Dipper knew, but every time he swung his flashlight too slowly upward, and the light illuminated nothing, the something having already moved on.

Still he followed it — the sound, the smell, the creature or creatures, he didn’t know which.  The voice that cautioned him to be afraid faded out completely, and he was left with a mind empty of anything but the thrumming desire to see what lived atop those legs.  If he’d had room for any other thoughts, he might’ve realized that his body seemed to move on its own, without any prompting from his brain.  But there was no room for worry, not when he was so close.  And he was  _ so  _ close.  He knew he was  _ so close.   _ The knowledge burned in his belly, sang in his veins.

He stepped out of the thick-set trees and into a clearing.  His flashlight caught a pair of those legs, and they didn’t move.  Dipper stood for a long moment looking at them, then tilted the light up, up, up, to meet a body covered in long, dark fur.  The face atop that body was just as thickly covered, but he could see two small, bright eyes peering at him, and — and — and it was smiling.  It was smiling at him with a mouthful of sharp, yellowed fangs.  Dipper took a step backwards, hit something firm and  _ furry _ , whirled around to face another creature just the same, so close that its smell was dizzyingly awful in his nose, so close that he could hear its breathing, hard and heavy.

Fear flooded back into his body, sending him reeling back, hitting the first creature, which had stepped up close behind him, and it dugs its clawed fingers into his shoulders, holding him tight.  Another limb — the second creature’s? Or a third’s? — skimmed across his forearm to dig its claws deep into the flesh at the base of his thumb.  The flashlight slid out of his grip, hand leaping to press at the cut, to stem the blood oozing out wet and warm from the wound.  When it hit the forest floor it rolled, briefly illuminating half a dozen or more legs, a flock of the creatures fast encroaching on him, and he helpless, unable to pull himself from the grip on his shoulders.

There was a sickening crunch and the light flickered out, leaving him in darkness amid the suddenly screaming, roaring whirl around him.  The creatures touched him, hit him, pushed him, grabbed and cut him, even bit him, if the splay of razor-sharp points that pushed into his skin were indeed teeth.  The claws on his shoulders dug hard into his flesh before suddenly tearing away.  In the pitch-black of night in a forest too thickset with leaves for the moonlight to filter through, Dipper couldn't tell how long this went on — minutes or hours?  He  _ could  _ tell when the blows and cuts became fewer and fewer and the creatures died (this from the sound of pained, high-pitched howls, the crunch of bones breaking, the horrible squelch of flesh rent apart).  

However long it went on, Dipper did not bear witness to its end (if, indeed, he could be said to do so at all while blind) since something pushed him backwards, and he fell hard against a tree trunk, passing into a darkness even deeper than that of the forest around him.

△△△

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Achieving alignment between chapters is hard! I'm not sure I did it. But I'm learning and growing as a writer, or whatever.
> 
> Come talk to me on tumblr at eatitnerds. We can talk about the Black Tapes Podcast, or weird kink stuff, I'm not picky.


	3. And I Won't Stay Very Long

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dipper wakes up on the forest floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought I would get this out sooner but I was so, so wrong. I’m trying really hard to get THIS fic done before I post any other parts of the TDHaSoM-verse, but honestly I’ve been alternating a lot between writing this and writing like three other fics in the verse. I can’t say anything with any amount of certainty but I hope to get the fourth and final chapter up by the beginning of July.
> 
> Warnings for this chapter: underage (Dipper is 16), possessiveness (Bill is a demon obsessed with Dipper, I don’t think anyone will be surprised by this, but he gets pretty intense about it and you may find that disturbing/triggering).
> 
> Still unbeta'd, still edited to the best of my ability, feel free to point out errors to me. Enjoy!

△△△

Dipper couldn't have been unconscious for long.  He opened his eyes to a dark and starry sky spread out above him.  His brain pounded in his skull, his body ached and stung all over.  He groaned at the shocks of pain that moved through him when he tried to sit up, prompting a familiar voice to speak to him.

"Don't move, Pine Tree, I'm not done."

"Bill...?  Done with what?"  He tried again anyway, only to have a small three-fingered hand press upon his chest and hold him down.  "Hey!"

"You’re a mess, kid.  I'm putting you back together.  I've already sewn up the worst of it but I’m not done yet—and there's a lot of blood on you."  He drew back his hand and glided into Dipper’s line of sight.  His usual eyesore yellow had been dimmed, and he looked now as though he’d been sculpted from tarnished gold.  The light he cast was soft and gentle on Dipper’s eyes.  "I think 'splattered in blood' looks good on you, of course, but you probably wouldn't agree."

"No, Bill," Dipper said with a sigh, "I don't."  He was hesitant to ask—but he had to know.  "Is it all mine?"

"The blood?"  Bill laughed, as manic as ever.  "You were right in my line of fire, Pine Tree!  It's almost all theirs!  Your clothes are probably ruined, by the way."

" _ Great.   _ Just great.  Wait— who are _ they _ ?  What were those things?” Bill slid out of Dipper’s sight, saying nothing in response.  "Bill?"

"Don't worry about it!"  Dipper felt those little hands return to bandaging his wounds.  “They're all dead now, anyway."

"Wh—Bill, did you just wipe out an entire species?"

"No," said Bill, "but that's not a bad idea, kid!”

"Bill!"

"What?  What is it?"

"You can't just kill anything you feel like killing!  I was trying to find out more about those things!"

"You don’t know what you were dealing with, Pine Tree."  Bill's voice dropped now, from high and fanciful to low and furious.  The hands swabbing at Dipper's wounds and applying band-aids stopped being so gentle, becoming brusquer, less careful to avoid inflicting further pain.  A punishment, but for what? Telling Bill not to commit murder?  "You don't know what they wanted to do with you.  You had no idea that they were luring you out, did you?  You just heard something  _ different  _ and assumed you could handle it by  _ yourself,  _ without even a flimsy human weapon.  Let me tell you, kid, there are plenty of beings like  _ me _ in this world, and I guarantee none of them cares about you like  _ I _ do!"

Dipper released a breath he hadn't known he was holding.  "You care about me?"

"You're always missing the point, Dipper."

Dipper could hear the scowl in Bill’s voice, he needed no mouth to convey it, but Dipper couldn’t bring himself to care.  He closed his eyes and smiled so wide it hurt.  "You  _ do, _ " he crowed.  When was the last time he had felt such immense relief?  "You do.  God, Bill."

"You don't have to call me god," said Bill, lightening up a little at the sight of Dipper’s smile.

Dipper laughed, and it hurt, and that only made him laugh harder, the sheer absurdity of the whole situation.  Bill glided back into his line of vision, looking about as confused as a triangle was capable of looking.  "Hey, I thought humans  _ didn’t _ think pain was hilarious, Pine Tree.  What's wrong with you?"  He peered at Dipper, only an inch or two away from his face.  "Is something wrong with your fragile human brain?"

"N-no," Dipper gasped, making a concerted if not very successful attempt to hold back his laughter.  "It's just—you—and this, it's all—it's so weird, oh my god."

" _ You’re _ the weird one, Pine Tree."  He slapped on one last bandage, this on Dipper's cheek, allowing his miniscule fingers to linger there for just a split second longer than necessary.  "You're all cleaned up now."

"Except for the blood," said Dipper, still smiling despite the fact that  _ that _ thought was enough to make his stomach churn.

"Except for the blood," agreed Bill.  The demon floated up and away, gesturing for Dipper to follow.  When he did so, wincing at the twinges of pain that went through him, he saw that they were in the same clearing in which they’d had their failure of a date, now illuminated by a ring of tall black candles.

"It looks like you were going to sacrifice me."

"Ha!  To who?  Myself?"  Bill snapped his fingers and the candles began to flicker out one by one.  "Black candles are the most versatile, so they’re my go-to."

"What's the significance of  _ black  _ candles?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?"  The last of the flames blinked out of being, and left them there together in the moonlight, Bill glowing faintly as usual.  "Come on, Pine Tree, time to go home."

"Yeah, okay."  He hoisted himself up.  "Wait—shit!  My journal!  Where’s my journal?"

Bill huffed and the journal in question popped into his hand.  "This journal?  It's kind of dry, kid.  Not enough drama."  He let Dipper snatch it from him.  "Come on, come on, it's all there.  Why would I take pages out?  Let’s go, your fragile human body needs sleep."

"I'm not fragile," said Dipper, ignoring him.  "Besides, can't you just teleport me to my bed?"

"I  _ can _ do anything, but I'm not  _ going to. _ "

At this, Dipper looked up.  "Why not?"

"Making you walk gives me more time to tell you what a huge mistake that was!"

"Ugh."  Dipper snapped his journal shut.  "Fine, let's go."  He shuffled off towards the Shack, wishing he could get away from Bill and his glowering aura of disappointment.

"Like I said," Bill shouted in his ear—or was it that the night was so quiet now, any noise would've sounded like a shout?—"You know nothing of those things!  Your problem, kid, is that you don't know what real fear is!  You think everything will be as tame and harmless as the monsters that have lived in this town for centuries!  Let me tell you something that Sixer and Stan don't want you to know, Pine Tree: things are much more dangerous outside of Gravity Falls.  This place is the closest thing to neutral ground on this insignificant little planet—at least, it was before  _ I _ showed up.  Since I’m stuck here, it’s  _ mine _ , and anything that comes in and threatens what's mine has to deal with  _ me _ .”

“Okay, Bill, I get it—”

“No, you don’t get it!”  Bill grabbed Dipper’s shoulders and spun him around.  His body flickered furiously from image to image—a wildfire burning out of control, a black hole, a wolf’s teeth bared in a snarl—“This place is mine, and everything in it is mine.   _ Everything _ .   But you, Pine Tree,  _ you _ —you’re—you’re—”

Dipper licked his lips.  He should have been frightened, shouldn’t he?  That would have been the normal human response, right?  Certainly the heat curling in his belly  _ wasn’t  _ the normal human response, he knew that much, but he couldn’t bring himself to worry much about its implications, not with all of Bill’s focus brought down upon him, locking him in place beneath that demonic gaze.  “I’m… what?”

“You’re _especially_ mine,” said Bill, his body catching on a loop of a sun going supernova.  “You’ve been mine since the second I noticed you, all those years ago when li ttle Gideon Gleeful summoned me, even if you haven’t known it.  As long as you’re within the borders of Gravity Falls, I’m not going to let anyone else so much as _touch_ you—and I _haven’t,_ I don’t know if you’ve even noticed, but until tonight you haven’t gotten so much as a scratch even though you keep throwing yourself into danger—but that doesn’t mean  you can just go off chasing after anything you come across!  What if they had lead you outside of town, huh?  I couldn’t have done anything!  You could have—you could have—”  He was shaking, now, Bill was actually shaking, his little fingers digging tight into Dipper’s shoulders as if holding the boy tighter would make a difference to his safety.

He was safe now, of course, but… 

“I could have gotten killed,” said Dipper.  “And you couldn’t have done anything about it.”

Bill released his hold and seemed to crumple in upon himself.  “Yes,” he said, in a voice that was barely there.  

Dipper stepped closer and reached to take Bill’s small black hands into his own.  Bill was, quite literally, an otherworldly monster, and maybe it should have sent him away screaming in terror when a monster staked a claim on him with such ferocity, but then again, he had never been a  _ normal _ human.  Why start now?  “Bill, I’m,” he swallowed thickly, tried again.  “You were right, before.  I’m obsessed with you.”

Bill looked up at him, but said nothing.

“Maybe I shouldn’t be,” he continued, “but I am.  It used to be that I hated you, and I wanted to stop you—to do more than stop you—to destroy you, but now…”  He looked away from Bill, into the darkness of the forest around them, feeling the blood rise to his face.  “I don’t hate you anymore.  I don’t think I could if I tried.  And I don’t—I don’t, uh— _ dislike _ the idea of being—of being  _ yours _ —even though I probably should dislike it, and, um.  I do dislike being tricked into a date.  And I hate being laughed at.  So next time, just—just ask me out, okay?  Like a regular person.  Even if you’re not a person at all.”  God, his face was burning, that heat curling in his belly was turning quickly into anxiety curdling there, Bill had better say  _ something _ soon, Dipper couldn’t handle this silence between confession and response.  The night’s events had been so much, and it was only now that the intensity of his exhaustion really hit him.

“So, Pine Tree,” said Bill, and Dipper drew his eyes away from the dark forest to see that Bill had sprung back to his usual bright yellow self, “will you go on a date with me?”

“Yes,” Dipper said, allowing himself a tired little grin.  “I’d like that.”

“Is it too soon to try another picnic?”  Dipper heard the grin in Bill’s voice.  “I’ve just come into a lot of meat, you know.”

Dipper made a face.  “That’s disgusting.  I’m not going on a picnic with you unless you swear you won’t feed me those things.” 

“You’re no fun,” Bill lied jovially.  He pulled one hand free from Dipper’s grasp, but held tight with the other, making to pull Dipper along with him.  “Come on, you need to sleep before our picnic.”

“We’re going on one  _ tomorrow? _ ” Dipper asked, hurrying along behind Bill.  “Bill, I need to, I don’t know, rest.  Sleep for like twelve hours minimum.”

“We’ll have it at sunset.  Sleep as long as you want.”

“Oh, fine,” Dipper huffed, but with a smile on his face, one that Bill saw when he looked backwards at Dipper.

△△△

They reached the shack more quickly than Dipper had expected, and he suspected that Bill  _ had _ made the journey shorter by way of magic, but he certainly wasn’t going to complain about it.

When Dipper stopped at the door, his hand on the doorknob, he looked back at Bill hovering just beyond the steps.  “This is goodnight, then?”  

“If you want it to be,” said Bill.

“Wh—well, you can’t come inside the Shack,” said Dipper.

Bill furrowed his non-existent brow.  “Sure, I can.”

“ _ What? _  But, but the unicorn magic is still there!”

Bill shrugged his whole body in lieu of shoulders.  “It doesn’t keep me from coming inside, kid.  It just keeps me from trying to damage the Shack or anyone inside of it.”

“Oh, well,” Dipper bit his lip and considered this for a moment.  “You can come inside, if you want.  I’m just gonna get something to eat and then go to bed.”  He opened the door and stepped inside.

Bill followed him through the lower level of the Shack, and watched as he opened the fridge and rifled through its contents.  Neither Stan nor Ford could be relied upon to keep a steady supply of anything other than coffee in the house, and though he and Mabel made grocery runs throughout the summer, they had been due for another since the day before.  He found nothing he actually wanted to eat in the fridge, or in the pantry when he wandered over to it.  He huffed, and behind him, Bill laughed and said, “Can I get something for you, Pine Tree?”

Dipper turned and tilted his head at Bill, considering.  “I don’t know…”

“Come on, just tell me what you’d like, and you’ll have it.”  He seemed eager to please, and as if on cue, Dipper’s stomach rumbled.

“Uh.  Fruit, maybe?”

Bill snapped his fingers (unnecessarily, of course, it was only for effect) and a perfectly shaped, dark purple plum appeared in his hand.  He held it out, and Dipper could smell its ripeness even through the space between them, could almost taste its juices on his tongue.  He scrutinized it; just because he had feelings for Bill didn’t mean he trusted the demon absolutely.  The plum was almost unnatural in the brightness of its color and the heady strength of its scent, and the words sprang unbidden out of Dipper’s lips.  “We dare not look at goblin men, we dare not buy their fruits.  Who knows upon what soil they fed their hungry, thirsty roots?”

Bill laughed, tossed the plum upwards and caught it as it fell.  “I’m much worse than any goblin, Pine Tree.”

“Yes,” Dipper agreed as he reached to take the plum.  He wanted it more than he distrusted Bill.  When he bit into it, the sweet juices flooded his mouth and dripped down his chin, and he moaned with pleasure at the taste.  He was so much hungrier than he had realized.  “Thif if,” he swallowed, “so good.”

“Of course it is, I made it.”

“You  _ made  _ it?” Dipper asked around another mouthful.

“I told you, rearranging atoms is much easier than stealing.  And you don’t get all bent out of shape by it.”  He blinked.  “Or is that yet to come?”

Dipper rolled his eyes and didn’t dignify the question with an answer.  He scarfed down the plum, licking his fingers clean, acutely aware of Bill watching him do so.  He held the sticky plum pit out to Bill when he finished.  “Do you want the atoms back?”

Another snap of Bill’s fingers and a flash of bright light—showy bastard—and the plum pit was gone, atoms rearranged into a three-sided stone with a hole through the middle.  Dipper ran his thumb over it, and glanced up to find that Bill had vanished.  He curled his fingers around the stone and made for the stairs.

△△△

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There’s no metaphor for forbidden fruit going on here (or if there is, it's not a conscious choice I'm making). I just really like Goblin Market and I love the idea of Dipper being really into poetry. What a cute nerd.
> 
> Come talk to me on tumblr at eatitnerds!


	4. But You Are the Life I Needed All Along

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dipper deals with the consequences of being covered in cuts and bruises. He also goes on a date.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I posted Chapter 3 of this fic, I had exactly 40 words of this chapter written. When I posted all the other chapters, I had at least half (~1000 words) written for the next chapter already. So please be surprised and impressed that this didn't take me a full two months to get up.
> 
> Warnings for this chapter: underage (Dipper is still 16), mild trauma/panic (on Dipper's part, from the attack).
> 
> Unbeta'ed, edited to the best of my ability, but please point out any glaring errors you find. Enjoy!

△△△

Unfortunately for Dipper, he wasn’t to get the twelve hours of sleep for which he’d hoped. Instead he got perhaps four hours—Mabel always woke up before him, but she didn't rise at the crack of dawn, thankfully. The sun was high in the sky when her scream forced him into consciousness.

“Huh—Mabel, what're you, what're you,” he yawned, groggy and confused. “What's goin’ on?” The words came out slurred, and this only seemed to upset Mabel more, because she grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him.

“Dipper, what _happened_ to you‽”

“I don’t know what you… mean…”  He began to stretch halfway through the sentence, and the shock of pain that passed through him coupled with the sight of his bruised and bandaged arms was enough to remind him what had happened the night before.  “Oh.”

“Yeah, oh!” Mabel cried just as the door swung open and the Stans scrambled into the room, talking over one another and Mabel. Their talk only grew louder and more frantic when they laid eyes on Dipper's face and arms.

“Kid, what the hell _happened_ — _”_

“Dipper, tell me you _didn't_ —”

“I was here all night, how did you—”

Dipper groaned and threw an arm over his eyes.

“—go to the hospital, you look awful—”

“Look, I—”

“—promised me you wouldn't. Why didn't you—”

“I _know,_ Ford, I—”

“—climb through the window?  But it didn’t—”

“It-it didn’t, I mean,” he took a deep breath, yanked his arm away from his face, and jerked upright.  “Stop!  Stop talking!   _STOP!_ ”

They stopped.  Three pairs of eyes looked at him, worried.

It would be nice if he, like Bill, had the ability to blink out of being.

“I went out looking for the thing making the noise,” he said.  He laughed weakly, without any humor, gesturing to his face and arms.  “They weren’t friendly.”  

“But you got away,” Ford prompted, after Dipper stared for a moment too long at his mottled skin.

“Yeah.  Well, no, actually.  I didn’t.  Bill showed up, and I got knocked out.”  He reached to feel the tender lump that had formed where he’d hit the tree trunk.  He winced.  “When I woke up, he was putting me back together.”

Stan scowled at the mention of Bill, and doubly so at Dipper’s assertion that Bill had _helped_ him.  “And then what?”

“He helped me back home,” said Dipper.  “That’s it.”  They stared at him, and he fidgeted beneath the weight of their judgement.  “Uh.  I don’t think I need to go to the hospital.  Can I go back to sleep now?”

Stan and Ford exchanged worried looks; only Mabel had really been placated by Dipper’s explanation.  She swatted Dipper on the shoulder—luckily, on the shoulder that _hadn’t_ been sliced open by a sharp set of claws—and told him not to be “such a fucking doofus next time” with a relieved grin on her face.  He looked at her pleadingly, and she must have taken pity on him.  She shuffled Ford and Stan out of the room, ignoring their protests, looking back to blow a kiss at Dipper before she pulled the door shut behind them.

△△△

The loud _CLACK_ of a rock hitting the attic’s little window jerked Dipper back into wakefulness.  His stomach grumbled as he sat up, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.   _CLACK_ .  Another rock.  “Okay, okay,” he mumbled, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. _CRACK._ A third, bigger rock sailed up and through the window, shards of glass flying, Dipper squawking indignantly and covering his face with his hands. He shouted as he made his way to the window, stepping over and around the glass on the floor. “Hey! How the fuck did you do that? Your magic isn't supposed to be able to—”

On the ground below, Mabel grinned up at him with another rock in her hand and Bill hovering at her shoulder. “Bill says he can fix it!”

“He better!”

“I will, Pine Tree,” Bill called. “Are you ready for our picnic?”

“Yeah, Dipper, are you ready for your daaate?”

Dipper looked up to see the sky purpling like a bruise (like his bruises, he thought). He _had_ slept all day, then. “I guess so,” he said. He ran his fingers through his greasy hair. “I've gotta shower first, though.”

“Take your time, kid!”

Dipper frowned down at the two of them, then at the hole in the window. “This better be fixed by the time I'm dressed,” he said, turning on his heel and stalking away.

△△△

The shards of glass had picked themselves up and fused back into the windowpane by the time Dipper emerged from the shower, hair dripping, to shimmy into his clothes.  His binder stuck to his wet skin and he swore as he tried to tug it down over his torso. The door swung open behind him and he whirled around, shouting. “What the—”

“Relax, Dipdop,” said Mabel. She was still grinning that same, immeasurably pleased grin. “Want some help?”

Dipper sighed and let his arms flop awkwardly in the air, trapped half-upright.  “Yes, please.”  

Mabel peeled the spandex away from Dipper’s damp skin and helped him wriggle all the way into it.  She hummed and looked hard at him in his underpants.  “I’m picking out your clothes,” she said after a moment, gliding off towards the dresser they shared.

“You really don’t need to do that—”

“Maybe not, but I’m doing it anyway!”

“Fine,” Dipper huffed.  Still, he caught the clothes she threw at him and put them on, then stood still (except for the rolling of his eyes) as she fiddled with his collar and the hem of his shirt.  “Come on, Mabel, I’ve gotta go.”

“Bill is immortal, he can wait a few minutes.”

“Yeah, well, I’m _not_ , am I?”

“Somebody’s nervous,” Mabel said cheerily.

“Annnd I’m leaving.”  Dipper ducked out of Mabel’s reach and sprinted for the door, totally oblivious to the huge smile on Mabel’s face as he grabbed for the stone on his bedside table and darted out.

△△△

Dipper walked out of the Shack’s back door expecting to find Bill waiting for him, but the demon was nowhere to be found.  So Dipper set off into the forest by himself, a little wary of the shadows where the leaves were very thick.  But nothing, it seemed, dared threaten him just then, and he made it to the clearing with no problem at all.  

Things looked much as they had the first time around, though the midday sun had been replaced by the darkness of the night sky, edged on one side by the orange light of the setting sun.  Bill sat on a checkered blanket in the center of the clearing, surrounded by candles (white wax, this time) and an even more lavish spread than before.  A three-tiered plate displayed several sorts of miniscule sandwiches, while another nearly sagged beneath a spread of wildly decorated petit fours and scintillating, jewel-like candies.  Dipper’s stomach grumbled, louder now.  It felt like it had been years since he’d last eaten, though he’d certainly eaten dinner the night before.  He smiled at Bill and greeted him.  “Hey, Bill.”

“Hi, Pine Tree,” Bill said, and though he had no mouth with which to smile, Dipper could hear one in his voice.

Dipper looked over the spread of food as he sat down beside Bill.  “There’s no monster meat in these, is there?”

“Of course not.  How would I win your affection if I tried to trick you into eating things you don’t want to eat?”

“Well, it definitely wouldn’t win you any points,” said Dipper.  He grabbed one of the sandwiches and shoved it whole into his mouth, continuing to speak around it.  “Bub you awreby hab my afebon.”

Bill blinked up at him.  “What was that?”

Dipper swallowed.  “You heard me.”

“Maybe.  Why don’t you tell me again, just to make sure?”

Another sandwich popped into Dipper’s mouth, and a shake of his head.  “Uh-uh.”

Bill rolled his eye and reached for a little silver teapot that had been hidden between the two towers of food.  He poured tea into a pair of silver teacups, one large and one small, and sent the larger cup floating towards Dipper with a flick of his fingers.  

Dipper grasped the delicate handle and sipped at it without a second thought.  Sweetness flooded his tastebuds.  He hummed in satisfaction.  

For a few minutes, they sat together in silence, Bill sipping his own tea with his mysterious not-mouth and Dipper munching on sandwiches with decreasing alacrity.  When Dipper had stopped eating the sandwiches whole, Bill said, “I have something for you, Pine Tree.”  He reached behind himself to pull out a package far too large to have been hidden behind his body.  It was wrapped in rough brown paper, held together with a white string tied in a bow.  It seemed to Dipper that it didn’t fit with Bill’s usual extravagance and flair, but he didn’t say as much.  He swallowed the last of the sandwich he’d been working on, took the package from Bill’s outstretched hands, and scrutinized it.  “You can open it, you know.  I promise it won’t bite.”

Dipper looked up and grinned.  “I never can be sure with you, Bill.”

Bill shrugged.  “I’m full of surprises.”

“That’s one way to put it.”  Dipper tugged at the dangling tails of the bow, pulling it apart and tossing the string aside.  He unfolded the brown paper and found himself faced with an expanse of dark fur, and a coil of braided leather.  “What… what is this?”

“This,” Bill picked up the leather coil, “is for the stone I gave you.  You have it with you, right?”

“Oh, I, yeah. I do.” He dug in his pocket and pulled it out, rolling it between his fingers.

Bill reached to pluck it from Dipper's palm.  He threaded the braid through the hole in the stone and knotted it in place, then slid the whole thing down over Dipper's head to rest around his neck. “Next time you go off alone, hold this to your lips and say my name into it,” said Bill.  “It’ll call me to you.”

Dipper raised his eyebrow.  “You’ll come at any time?”

“Of course,” Bill said.  He picked up one of the dainty sandwiches and munched on it, bite marks appearing although each bite simply disappeared when the sandwich made contact with the surface of Bill’s body.  “I know better than to ask you to make your mistakes during human business hours only.”

“Hey!”

“I’m _kidding,_ Pine Tree.  We both know your primary mistake is going anywhere without me.”

Dipper felt the blood rush to his cheeks.  “So, uh, now—now I don’t have to, huh?”

“Exactly!”

“Well,” Dipper dropped the stone down behind the neckline of his shirt.  “Thank you, Bill.”

“You’re very welcome.  Want to guess what the other half of your gift is?”

Dipper eyed the dark fur still sitting in the brown paper wrapping.  “You skinned something,” he said doubtfully.

“I did!  I skinned those beasts from last night.”

“Ugh—seriously?”  Dipper gagged and pulled his hand away from the soft fur.  “Oh god—is that what this is made of?”  He gripped the leather around his neck and made to pull it off, but he needed both hands to clap over his mouth and stifle the wave of nausea that overtook him.  In a flash, Bill was floating right in front of him, holding his face in those small black hands.

“Pine Tree?  Pine Tree, you don’t have to worry.  I killed them.  They’re dead.”

Dipper sucked in a deep breath from between the fingers over his mouth and nose, then another, and another.  He focused on the chill of Bill’s hands.  The nausea and the panic that accompanied it began to recede.  “Right,” Dipper breathed at length, half-sighing.  “They’re dead.  Right.”

“I’ll never let anything hurt you like that again.”

“You won’t,” Dipper agreed.  He pulled his hands from his face and reached out to grasp Bill’s body.

“What are you—oh.”  Bill let himself be folded up into Dipper’s embrace.  Had Dipper been looking, he would have seen Bill flash pink, surprised but pleased by this turn of events.  “It’s a fur blanket, by the way.  It’ll keep any of them—others of them—from trying to get to you, if you sleep with it at least once a week.”  He patted Dipper’s cheek with one hand.  “Or you could just wear me around your neck.”

Dipper snorted, his worry having released him at least for the time being.  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“Oh, absolutely, Pine Tree.”  He pinched Dipper’s cheek, and Dipper swatted at him.  “I’m happy to keep my watchful eye on you all the time, if that’s what you want.”

“Mmm.”  Dipper ran his fingertips over the rough edges of Bill’s body.  He had never before had the opportunity to touch the demon, and though this change in relationship seemed to indicate that he’d get plenty of chances to do so in the future, he wasn’t about to pass up this particular chance.  “Why a blanket?”

“You get cold easily.”

“How did you know that?” asked Dipper.  “I’ve only ever been here in the summer.”

“I have my ways,” Bill replied cryptically.  

To his surprise, Dipper found that he didn’t particularly care what those ways were.  Bill might have been watching him somehow throughout the years, or he might have simply heard Mabel say as much.  “I guess I’ll use a blanket.  Since it doesn’t smell like—like those things did.”

“Good.”

They looked at each other.  Dipper smiled a little smile.  Bill reached to touch Dipper’s cheek.  “You should eat more, kid.”

“Yeah.  Can you, uh—can you take me home after this?  I think I need to sleep for, like, twelve more hours.”

Bill floated up to get closer than he already was.  He blinked, his eyelashes fluttering against Dipper’s face.  “Anything for you, Pine Tree.”

▲▲▲

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HOOO BOY. I'm surprised I finished this fic, honestly. The series is by no means done (and I've been working on at least three other installments of it) but this CHAPTERED MONSTROSITY finally is. It's all one-shots from here on out, folks. Glorious, glorious one-shots. Anyway, thanks for reading this fic, and I hope you'll subscribe so you can read the rest of Dipper's queer trans adventures. Most if not all of the subsequent fics will have Dipper's transness (and anxiety, and depression) figuring prominently in them, fyi. This fic is one of the few where those things aren't really relevant.
> 
> If you come talk to me on tumblr under eatitnerds, maybe I'll let slip some of the loads of smut I've got in the works, hmm?

**Author's Note:**

> Dipper's problem with habits is actually my own problem with habits. Especially with brushing my teeth. Every night it's "I don't want to brush my teeth, I am so tired, but if I don't then I won't brush them again for a week." Developing and maintaining habits is so much. Adulthood: not even once.
> 
> As ever, you can find me on tumblr, also under eatitnerds. Feel free to come share your trans headcanons and/or filthy kinks with me.


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